CSW- Views from an attendee- She Loves Queues (lines)

funny thing happened on my way to Forum….
Was it Mel Brooks who said that? Those ones of you who are old enough to remember this musical, set up in a Roman environment, might also remember the expression. According to my line of thinking it is also a way of saying that everything comes to the ones who are waiting patiently enough!
And waiting patiently is what it is all about. I might never have been to a UN Meeting before, BUT I have been to several international meetings, in Soroptimist International as well as in Rotary International, and I know for sure that it is the queues that everything happens. You find a long lost friend, you get new friends even if you are 60 plus and you get to exchange ideas just because you are there - for several hours!
Take me, for an example! In 2001 I and my husband were standing in a queue in Buenos Aires, Argentina, waiting to register for the Rotary Convention there. Nothing happened in the queue; we started talking to the people behind us, this led to that, and the next year we met privately…and the next year too…and now we are friends forever. All four of us sixty plusses! Whoever said that you do not make new friends when you are “reaching a more advanced age?”
Take today, for an example. There we were, my room-mate and I, queuing for access passes to the UN building. There was a Japanese student in front of us, saying that she was studying the situation of elderly people, and they had been making a study tour to Linköping, which happens to be my home town in Sweden. Then there was this funny lady from a German speaking country making jokes about this and that. Then there was this well dressed gentleman who came into the passport office, evidently waiting to sail through the process like a leaf in the wind. Well, he took a look at the throng (of ladies) and sighed, loudly enough to be heard all through the room: Oh, my, I think that I’ll come back later!
I Just love queues!
Ann-Christine (Stina) Söderlund, Sweden